In spite of…

In spite a very difficult start to our first day of our new homeschool, my li’l ‘Rosebug drew one of her most proficient drawings for a school assignment. It is supposed to be a drawing of her home, featuring things that start with the letters A and B. In the picture the Rosebug is eating an apple, she drew a tree with a nest, butterflies, our dog, Bindi, and Bob “with gray and black hair”. Picture me smiling.

And that was one of the few smiles I managed to squeeze out yesterday. What a fiasco yesterday was! I have to say that the ‘Bug displayed extraordinary (and uncharacteristic!) patience yesterday while I attempted to figure out how the new (to us) online school worked, and what we were supposed to be doing. I was all ready to get into it at 4 in the morning yesterday, and figure it all out and have a plan worked out before she ever got out of bed. But they didn’t post any assignments until almost 8 in the morning, when I am well into the furious and tight schedule that is my every weekday morning. I didn’t get a chance to look at it until after 9 in the morning.

We have two accounts, one for me, the “Learning Coach” and one for her, the “Student”. As soon as I could get on my computer I jumped into my account and thanked God when I saw lessons posted in the site. I opened up the first one and tried to read through it, but there were 17 pages of small text to read through! I didn’t understand the structure at all, it seemed as though some of it was coaching for me and some of it were actual lessons for her but it all didn’t make sense. What I was expecting, I think, was an assignment. You know, “read page 3 – 7 and then answer the questions on page 8”. But these guys are actually giving me extremely explicit directions on how to teach. I was reading and reading and reading and it was like if someone said to you: open your purse. Now take out your keys. Now walk to your car. Now put the key in the small hole beneath the handle of the front drivers side door (TIP! If the key doesn’t fit in the hole, you may want to try different keys on your key ring or perhaps try turning the key upside down to get the correct fit). Now, get in the car, and turn on your GPS unit. Go to the navigation screen and type in …..

And you say to yourself “OH! They want me to drive to work!”

After 17 pages I finally figured out that they wanted me to teach her about words ending in the sound /l/. Okay, I can do that…